


Our Callous Minds

by Englandwouldfall



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Claire and Krissy hunt together, Deviant from mid-season finale, F/F, Family, Hunter!Claire, Romance, hunter!Krissy, spoilers for season 10
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-02
Updated: 2015-01-22
Packaged: 2018-03-04 23:22:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3096356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Englandwouldfall/pseuds/Englandwouldfall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Given it was a mission from God and angelic forces that tore her life apart, piece by piece, Claire Novak didn't expect to allow the Winchesters to drag her further into their world.</p>
<p>Still, given the choice of being delivered back to solitary confinement or being dumped amidst a motley crew of teenagers who used to kill vampires, she picks the latter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For Christmas my lovely friend Elsa requested I write her some Krissy/Claire fic. She still hasn't caught up and seen the latest episode with Claire and I'm PSYCHED about how much the pairing works given all the new stuff about Claire.... but given this first chapter starts right after 10.9 it probably doesn't make much sense to her yet so, actually, it's a bit of a rubbish present so far. And late, too.
> 
> So, Elsa, please accept my humble gift. I promise I will get to Krissy/Claire hunting together very shortly, when Castiel/Winchesters will probably clear off to go deal with the mark of cain and the rest of the plot.

Claire is still caught up in _blood leaking from her pseudo-father’s chest, the smell of it, Dean Winchester knelt in the middle of the carnage; she's reaching for the man that looks like her father on automatic… his arms closing round her, shielding her…_. 

Castiel had dragged her to the car, silent, and now she’s more or less locked in a motel room. Apparently she’s still a flight risk, more so since she just stumbled onto the scene of a mass murder, but she’s glad that they left in here alone. The steely, grim frown on her father’s face belongs to Castiel. Her makeshift family sold her out. Randy is dead. One of her would-be knights in shining armour slaughtered him. The time to think without three of her nightmares hovering around is a blessed relief, even if she knows that they're standing guard outside. 

There's still a window. She half reckons they want her to escape so they don't have to deal with her any more, but can console themselves with the knowledge that they tried. Fuck that. 

She’s pulled herself out of her shock just about the time Sam Winchester turns up again, voice shaking as he tells Castiel, not her father, that he needs him to check that the crime scene is clean on the other side of the motel door; there are a few mumbled conversations that she can’t quite make out, but she can recognise the intonation of Jimmy’s voice that signifies that Castiel left and came back, and that two other people are speaking. The Winchesters. 

“Krissy?” One of the Winchester asks, clear enough that she can hear him despite the dry-wall barrier. She's stayed in crappy motels a few times and this isn't the worst, but with the Winchesters, who are clearly psycho-murderers, and Castiel engaged in masquerading as her father outside it could be the start of a weird ass horror flick. Krissy could be the method they use to keep her from talking, or the location they'll bury her body. 

“Why not?” The second returns. Neither of them sound as calm as they had in the alley or at any point afterwards, which is reassuring given the number of people who died tonight; each of their voices is thrumming with tension and barely concealed panic. It’s soothing. It helps. She’s not the only one spooked. “Krissy has a pretty sweet set up, Josephine’s of age…. don’t see that we have a hell of a lot of options here, Sam. We drop the kid back off at Juvenile centre or we take her to Krissy.” There’s a pause. “Don’t give me that look, Cas,” 

Cas. 

The nickname bestowed on the angel who broke her family. 

And worse, the psycho that just single handedly murdered half of her make-shift family, a loan shark and his lackeys isn't talking about how to silence her, but who's responsibility she is, like everyone else. It's like the whole damn world engaged in a mass custody battle where everyone's fighting not to have her but everyone thinks they have a right to sift through her options and pick one out. Even the trio who got her father killed and tore apart her family are wading in with an opinion, which is just peachy. 

“She needs someone to look after her,” Castiel says, which is enough to have her standing up and pacing the room because it’s a bit fucking rich to have the guy who killed her father suddenly start caring about her welfare. Maybe the Castiel of now is a nicer version than the one she met a few years ago, but he’s _not_ her father and her welfare isn’t his business. It isn’t. 

She was doing _fine_ before any of them showed up. 

“And that someone’s you, is it?” Dean asks, voice rising. “Cas, you can barely take care of yourself, let alone a seventeen year old kid.” 

His voice is unnecessarily harsh, tense. It cuts through the walls. 

“Dean…” Sam says. 

“And let’s not forget you’re wearing her father. You think you can have one moment of doubt and walk back into her life and screw it up some more? You can’t fix this, Cas, so drop it. We take her somewhere safe and we leave her the hell alone. And next time you wanna drag innocents into our mess, how about you _call me_ first?” 

Claire balls her fists up into her waist, continuing her pacing. She doesn’t want Dean to be the one speaking her thoughts, not after what she witnessed tonight, but tears are burning at the back of her eyelids anyway, because all of it true. Castiel can't fix this and she doesn't really believe he wants to. 

“Are we just going to keep pretending that what happened back there can be just swept under the rug?” Sam asks, voice shaking. 

“He _pushed_ me,” Dean says through gritted teeth, then there’s a muffled thump and the wall shakes slightly, and Claire would have bet her last twenty dollars that he nearly put his fist through the dry wall. 

She pauses, momentarily, before bursting back into motion. It’s better than sitting and thinking. _Randy, selling her out, the man who paid for her’s sneer as he advanced on her, the relief of Castiel smashing the door wide open… the blood, leaking from her attackers chest, Randy dead on the floor…_

“ _Dean,”_ That’s Castiel again, impassioned and pleading. Claire’s back to his expression as he’d driven them both to the motel, like he was just barely holding his shit together. The Castiel she met before, hell, the Castiel she consented to be a vessel for, was more stoic and controlled. He’d been emotionless and easier to distance from a real living entity. He was just an _angel_. It's easier to hold him accountable now he's twisting that familiar face into emotions all over the place. 

“We sort out what we’re doing with Claire,” Dean says, voice tight, “Then we deal with the rest.” 

“Deal how, Dean?” 

Sam. Dean ignores him. 

“Cas, you wanna take the deciding vote? Krissy or the group home?” 

“She was placed in solitary confinement,” 

“So, Krissy’s,” Dean says, “I’d say it’s about a nine hour drive –“ 

“ – Deal with it _how_?” 

“Cas and I have an arrangement.” 

“ _Dean_.” 

There’s too much emotion in her father’s voice and there are too many decisions being made without her permission. Her future is being left to the whims of three murderers. She really fucking wishes she hadn’t asked Castiel to break her out of the home. 

Shitty as her life was, she still felt she had control of it. She’d have broken out eventually, just would have taken a couple of days. She wouldn’t have known that Randy might sell her for the right price tag, because she wouldn’t be there. She’d still be blissfully unaware in solitary confinement. She'd hate herself for Randy getting cut up because Claire couldn't deliver the money, but he probably wouldn't be dead. Bleeding, probably, but he'd have made it out alive. Dead people can't pay interest. 

_Randy was her family_. 

Claire throws open the door of the motel room, staring down the three of them. 

Sam Winchester gapes at her slightly before he flips over to guilt. There’s still congealed blood on Dean Winchester’s forehead and there’s a blood stain on his jeans. Then again, that might not be fresh. Destruction and death follow the lot of them. Their appearance barely registers, though, because it's Castiel that she's drawn too. Castiel’s expression is twisted into pained emotion, the kind of look that was only ever reserved for the worst arguments between Jimmy and Amelia Novak; Castiel looks torn, exhausted and down right scared. The intensity of the emotion on her father’s face makes her gut hurt on automatic, defying the logic that makes her want to punch the angel in the face. 

It figures that they’re talking about what to ‘do’ with her so intently that they forgot that she was sitting in the next room. They’re all fucking assholes with whacked out senses of perspective and no right to decide her future for her, and she hates all three of them. It sucks that right now they're probably her best option, because they feel guilty enough about ruining her life that they'll probably at least cough up some cash, which she needs to get the hell away. 

“Don’t you think _I_ should get the deciding vote?” Claire demands, staring at the three of them, “Given it’s _my life_.” 

“You’re right,” Sam interjects, before anyone else can speak, “We’re sorry, Claire. Let’s talk about this inside.” 

Her gaze falls back to Dean, who’s visibly tense but not as out of it as he was before, when they burst in on him surrounded by bodies and blood and death. She's not scared of him like she thought she'd be because with his hollowed out eyes and clenched fists, he doesn't look that frightening. More stressed and sad than _scary_. 

“You want me to wait outside?” Dean asks. It’s a more reasonable question than she was expecting. She still doesn’t know what the damn hell is going on (Sam Winchester tried to garble an explanation about a mark, demons and Dean not being in right mind whilst Claire was shaking in the back of the car, before Castiel had cut across him and told him to deal with Dean), but at least no one’s acting like this is normal. Everyone _knows_ it's fucking weird to hulk out and kill a bunch of humans, before having a complete breakdown about it in a pool of their blood. 

“No,” Claire decides because, for all he’s a mass murder and clearly needs to be sectioned for other’s safety, he’s almost talked sense on a number of occasions. He’s angry about a couple of the same things that Claire is angry about and she'd rather he wasn't left alone. Illogical as it is, Castiel's presence makes feel like everything is slightly more under control. It's probably just a throwback from looking like her father and that bullshit parental thing where their presence is just _comforting_ , like they can protect you, right up until the point they both walk out and you realise they didn't even try. 

“Alright, then,” Dean says, stepping past her to enter the room. He slumps down on one of the seats in the corner of the room and places his head in his hands. 

“You’re hurt,” Castiel says, following Dean into his corner and pausing in front of him, a little closer than strictly necessary. Claire swallows and sits back down on the bed, glancing at her hands. 

“I’m fine,” Dean grates back, rolling his eyes as Castiel reaches his fingers to his forehead, “Don’t waste your mojo on me, dude, I need you fighting fit.” 

Sam Winchester clears his throat. 

Claire looks up at him. 

“We ran into Krissy hunting a pair of vetala that took her father. She took out one of them and saved both of us. Few years later, a hunter set her up. He had a vampire kill her father to try and motivate her into hunting again.” 

“I know angles and demons nothing else,” Claire says, stomach twisting. “Speak my language or you can fucking forget it.” 

“Point is,” Dean says, interrupting, “He played her. She had a chance to put a bullet through his brain for having her father killed and she chose better. I wanted to drop her off with her aunt, but she made her own family unit with a couple of teenagers who were played the same way in Conway Springs. They don’t hunt, but they can look after themselves. I reckon you two would get along.” 

“And you let her stay?” Claire asks, blinking back up at him. Castiel is still hovering too closely in Dean’s personal space, still worried and agitated, and it’s unsettling. 

“You watch both your parents die I figure you’re not a kid anymore,” Dean shrugs, “And we don’t have any right to tell you what you can or can’t do.” 

“No, you don’t,” Claire says, and the truth of the admission has her blinking back tears she doesn’t want to cry. Not right here and right now. 

Not with Castiel occasionally looking at her like she means something to him. Not when the part of her fucked up brain that’s searching out aspects of Jimmy in the way Castiel holds himself _wants_ to mean something to Castiel. 

No one has any right to tell her what to do anymore. Anyone who ever did gave up that right a long time ago. 

“Plus, Krissy's a hardass. Couldn't have stopped her if I wanted to." 

Claire hums slightly in response. 

"I don’t think your connection to Randy is gonna cause you problems if you stay, so don’t let that influence your decision,” Dean continues, his expression hardening as he mentions Randy. Claire wonders if he’s reasoning it away to himself, that he’s a bad guy who was gonna sell his seventeen year old pseudo-daughter to a loan shark, or if he’s just trying to bite back the bile that comes with sticking a knife in someone and calmly (almost) discussing the event afterwards. 

Castiel looks like he wants to reach out and touch Dean’s shoulder, but aborts the motion before it begins. Claire would quite like to laugh because, of course, even if she does mean something to Castiel it’s nothing to what _these_ people mean to him. 

Castiel told her off for her intention to rob the store, but Dean Winchester murdered at least five people today. 

“They’re good people, Claire,” Dean says, “Better than us.” 

She can’t stay with the Winchesters and Castiel, even if they wanted her too (which they don’t; that’s been made clear from the off). Anyway, she doesn’t want to. They mean next to nothing to her and it would probably easier if they meant less. 

The good things about her life in Pontiac were snatched away the second Castiel stepped foot in the juvenile centre. Randy is dead ( _bleeding, bleeding, the thick stench of blood hanging in the air; screaming…_ ) and Dustin knew that she was being played. He’ll have questions, anyway, and suspicions; nothing that will have the police on her ass but enough that he won’t want anything to do with her anymore. So, she’s alone again. That’s not _new_. It seems to be the default setting she’s returned to every few months, at least since her father disappeared on a holy mission and her mother disappeared, period. She doesn’t mind, but it means there’s no reason to stay. 

If she spends any more time forced into the dark spaces of her own head in solitary confinement, something is going to give. They’ll want to _talk_ about how she feels about Castiel, theoretically her father, showing up (shitty; for one glorious moment she’d thought it was _him_ coming home like she always believed he would, like she prayed for, and instead she gets a stick-up-the-ass angel using her to ease his guilt and dropping a bomb on the hope she’s been pretending not to have for years). They’ll nag at her about school and pretend like they care about her personal sob story, like they know a damn thing about it. 

It was God who screwed her over. 

She doesn’t want to be here anymore. 

She’ll have to put up with Castiel and possibly the Winchesters for the length of car journey, but then she’ll be a couple of states away from anyone who’s trying to look for her. 

She can give this Krissy the slip the second the Winchesters drive away again. Krissy won’t care. She doesn’t have any reason to feel guilty about her. She's just another teenager who got caught up in the Winchester's mess. 

“Okay,” Claire says, looking up to meet the blue eyes that don’t belong to her father and swallowing, “Okay.”


	2. Chapter 2

She’d intended to allow herself a few minutes to cry when she was finally left alone to sleep, or at least as alone as she could be with Castiel standing outside the door (and she had to push him into leaving too, because he didn’t exactly seem to _get_ the fact that she couldn’t sleep with a weirdoid angel hovering above her bed), but then the confirmation that her father was _dead_ and not just still being utilised as a vessel, and Randy’s betrayal, and the fear and his death hit her all at once. 

She doesn’t cry much, as a rule, but after the first tear they kept clogging up her face and shuddering through her lungs, until she smothered the sounds of her sobbing into the shitty motel sheets lest, God forbid, either Castiel or the Winchesters tried to _comfort her_. 

She wakes with a headache, eyes feeling raw and her stomach twisting. 

“Up and at ‘em, Miley Cyrus, we hit the road in twenty minutes.” 

Dean Winchester. 

“Screw you, Jackass,” Claire mutters into the pillow, balling her fists into it. She can _sense_ that Castiel is still hovering, even if she hasn’t looked up yet. His presence pulls out the moody thirteen year old she never really got to be, though, and she ends up throwing her pillow in the direction she thinks he’s probably in and storming to the shower. 

She’s alone when she steps out the shower, although she’s sure Castiel is stood outside. Perhaps one of the Winchester informed him of her probable discomfort. She pulls back on yesterday’s clothes because she has nothing else and, anyway, it’s not her first rodeo. It's not the first time she's wound up somewhere with nothing but the clothes on her back. There’s blood on her jeans. She doesn’t know whose. 

There’s a knock on the door. 

Claire throws it open, folds her arms and glares at Sam Winchester. 

“I went and picked up your stuff,” Sam says, face drawn in slight misery (unrelated to her; she is an inconvenient blip on their psycho murder-filled lives, and a good job too), as he presents her with the backpack she’d left at the group home. She bites back the urge to say thank you and just nods, because she doesn’t want to thank any of them for any of this. They contributed to ruining her life. She doesn’t care that if he got up early and spun the home some line in order to pick her up some of her stuff (most of the stuff she cares about is at Randy’s, but she’s not going back there if someone pays her). “However long you need. We’ll be downstairs.” 

Castiel didn’t give her a chance to collect her belongings before. That sort of thing probably didn’t even occur to him. He’s too inhuman to think she might want what little she actually has. It’s just a few other pieces of clothes, a spare tooth brush and her phone charger, really, but it’s better than nothing. 

Five minutes later, she’s stood next to Castiel’s car in the parking lot. 

“Coffee,” Dean says, pushing a disposable cup into her hands along a paper bag, “Breakfast. Wanna put this place in my rear view mirror as quickly as possible,” Dean says. 

“So I get all three of the musketeers? Lucky me.” Claire asks, fingers closing around the coffee. The warmth makes everything feel more real and she didn't need that. 

“Don’t flatter yourself, we’re splitting just after hitting Kansas. Daddy Day Care here can handle you after that,” Dean says, nodding towards Castiel. Castiel frowns at him.“There’s sugar in the bag if you want it.” 

“So this is goodbye?” Claire says, sarcasm thick as she raises an eyebrow at Dean Winchester. 

“Don’t get too excited, sweetheart, we’ll stop halfway for lunch,” Dean says, tapping the bonnet of Cas’ car before stepping towards his own shiny black muscle car, jaw set. He’s the very picture of man pain, and Claire’s glad she doesn’t have to deal with it much longer. 

Well, Dean’s version of it. Castiel is sitting stiff and awkward in the front seat of his car, hands clenched on the steering wheel. 

“Perfect,” Claire mutters, slipping into the passenger seat. 

“Claire,” Castiel says, thirty minutes of silence later, when the part of town she recognises has fallen away behind her. Castiel hasn’t really looked at her since he started driving, and she’d assumed he’d been thinking about the Winchesters rather than her. “I… I am sorry for the effects of my actions.” 

Claire nods and deliberately looks out the window. 

“Why now?” She asks, after a few more moments. Her head still hurts from crying too much, and the coffee Dean Winchester handed to her is black rather than white, but she’s been sipping it anyway. She can’t face breakfast yet. Everything’s changing again. “You’ve been in the wind for years. My Dad’s been dead for years, apparently. Why?” 

“Dean says I’m having a midlife crisis,” Castiel says, fondness creeping at the corner of his mouth. Claire balls her hands into fists. She hates all of this crap. 

“You know that’s not good enough, right?” Castiel is silent again. “So what’s this arrangement he’s pulled you into?” 

“Dean wishes for me to take him out.” 

“Like, for dinner and a movie?” 

Castiel looks at her, this time, all frowns and confusion. Right. Angel. 

“No, he wishes for me to kill him.” 

“Shit,” Claire says, as Castiel tightens his grip on the wheel. “Because of the… the hulking out, slasher flick deal?” 

“He is… no longer in control,” Castiel says, “He does not want to be a monster, Claire.” 

“That’s… heavy,” Claire says, frowning as she watches him watching the road. “And kind of a douche move. Why can’t he put a bullet in his own brain?” 

Castiel, stoic and unflappable and solid, winces enough that the car swerves slightly on the road. His expression is on a par with when Claire bought up her unanswered prayers (‘what messed up world does he have to die and you get to live?’), or maybe how her father looked when her mother wouldn’t buy the angel story. 

Claire’s throat constricts. 

She turns on the radio and stays silent until they stop for lunch. 

* 

“Change of plan,” Dean says after they've pulled into the parking lot, “There's a bunch of corpses missing hearts in a town twenty miles over.” 

He’s leaning against the side of Castiel’s car, like he couldn’t have just waited until they got out, and the strange familiarity still makes her head spin. She’s seen the inside of Castiel’s head, same as he seen the inside of hers, so she knows, at least vaguely, that Dean Winchester is important to Castiel. The reason she got her father back last time was because Castiel had been sent back to Heaven to be disciplined, because of his relationship with _Dean_ and here they are, years down the line, and apparently he still has the Winchesters on speed dial. 

She’s not expecting the silent conversations, the staring and how torn up the angel wearing her father seems to be about Dean going dark side. Angels aren’t supposed to _feel_. They’re not supposed to care about the mud monkeys. They care about the bigger pictures. They leave desperate little girl’s prayers unanswered because of some jigsaw piece in the grand scheme of things, and some fucked up calculation that is supposed to amount to the greater good. 

And it fucking sucks to be on the other side of that. To know that you’re not important because the whole world’s at stake. To know that you’re insignificant. That your pain doesn’t count. 

It’s worse, actually, that that’s not absolute. Castiel cares enough about Dean Winchester to act like a human, but not about _her_ and not about _her father_. 

“Werewolves?” Castiel asks. 

Claire snorts. Angels and demons are ridiculous enough, but then her family was always religious. Werewolves are a different kind of crazy all together. She gets out the car and folds her arms over her chest. _Missing hearts._ She’s pretty sure they mean literally. Jesus. 

“Looks like, yeah. Sam's heading over after food, so looks like you've got company.” 

“Dean –” Castiel begins, opening the door and pulling himself up to his full height in one smooth moment. 

“– Cas you know I can't hunt and I dunno if leaving me own is the best plan right now. I feel better knowing I've got a potential grenade on my ass, okay? And I've been meaning to check in on Krissy, anyway, she's only a couple of hours from base. We can haul ass back to the bunker when we’re done, and then we can… figure out the rest.” 

“Will Sam be okay on his own?” 

“He's a big boy, Cas, he'll be fine,” Dean says, rolling his eyes, “If that’s all right by you, Annie?” 

“You are referring to the musical?” Castiel asks, tilting his head slightly. 

“The pop culture thing is still frigging weird,” Dean shoots back, but his expression has softened ever so slightly. Neither of them are looking at her. Claire wants to punch both of them in the face. 

“After you, Miss Hannigan,” Claire throws back, narrowing her eyes in Dean’s direction. 

“Touché,” Dean says, holding up his hands, “Sam’s got us a table. Cas said you liked burgers.” 

Claire swallows the lump at the back of her throat and pushes past the both of them, heading for the dinner. The fact that after years of being abandoned Castiel is suddenly, hopelessly, trying to make an effort feels like a knife in the gut. He has no _right_ to care about her food preferences and to look at her like she’s a precious broken object. 

She was _fine_ before he waded back in, wearing a bastardisation of her Dad’s old trench coat like that coat meant something to _Castiel_ , with his fucking mid-life crisis and his borderline inappropriate staring competitions with a guy who murdered five people yesterday. 

“Gotta say,” She hears Dean say behind her, “I kinda like her.” 

* 

“Awkward family Road Trip, huh?” Dean says as they walk back to the car. “Awesome.” 

The burgers were good. Castiel didn’t eat (angel), but Dean ordered for him anyway. They wound up splitting the extra food between Claire and Dean, whilst Sam rolled his eyes and muttered about heart attacks. Sam was the only one who tried to engage her conversation which was good, because she didn’t want to talk to any of them. Castiel was almost silent. 

It was possibly the least awful encounter she’s had with them thus far, but then again she wasn’t possessed by an angel, about to rob a convenience store or fighting off some creepy fucking loan shark. 

“I’m driving." 

“It’s my car, Dean,” Castiel counters. 

“Well, you stole it,” 

Castiel glances back at Claire like he’s just realised what a hypocrite he is ( _“But it’s…. it’s wrong”_ ), but Claire’s not particularly surprised. She’d known Castiel was a high-and-mighty douchebag from the off, and she’d seen through his concerned parent-act the second he showed up. It’s just guilt. It’s just guilt that’s transferred onto the shit that she pulls too, because that’s on Castiel and his holy mission. That’s his fault. Claire rolls her eyes at him and climbs into the backseat. 

“I’m not allowed to drive your car,” 

“No, you ain’t. Anyway, I’m more experienced.” 

“I am thousands of years old, Dean,” 

"They have cars when Noah was still kicking?" 

“Will you guys quit bickering?” Claire asks, rolling down the window to glare at both of them. There’s an angel and a mass murder arguing about who should fucking drive, with way more heat than about whether they should leave her on the side of the road or dump her back at the group home. Her head still hurts. 

Castiel’s face softens as he looks at her, which is irritating. Dean takes the keys out of his pocket whilst he’s distracted, and raises an eyebrow when Castiel turns his blue gaze back towards him. It’s a ‘what you gonna do’ type expression, and everything about their interactions it’s just _weird weird weird_ and the sooner she’s been dumped with this Krissy, the better. 

Castiel rolls his eyes and wordlessly takes shotgun. 

* 

Claire started pretending to be asleep about thirty miles back, because Castiel tried to strike up conversation with her a few times but has clearly never met a teenager in his thousand years of existence and has no idea where to start, and because each time he attempted to talk to Dean instead, Dean glanced back at her and offered up only one word answers. 

The silence was penetrating deep into her skull, reminding her far too much of solitary confinement, and at least the bickering and the fucking weird interactions between her father’s voice and Dean Winchester was better than being left with only the ugly, angry space inside her head. 

“So your girlfriend ran into her vessel’s husband and…. Ascended,” Dean says, “And that jumpstarted this foray into Dadstiel and this whole… I’ve hurt people how do I fix that crisis?” 

“Hannah was not –“ 

“ – missing the point, man I just…. You know you don’t have to do this alone, Cas. You had your angelic mission and whatever but, you could have come after me instead.” 

The admission is low and much too private for Claire to be eavesdropping on, but it’s too late now. Anyway, she can’t deny that she’s curious. She doesn’t want to be. Wants to get as far away from the stuff the tore her life apart as she can, except she’s being driven across state lines to stay with a teen ex-hunter and each conversation drop about _werewolves_ and _vampires_ has her listening a little closer. 

They’re silent for a few moments. Claire keeps her eyes firmly shut, but readjusts her makeshift hoodie-pillow. She wishes she hadn’t had to sell her mp3 player last month. 

“Not saying that you’re wrong to care about what happened to Jimmy’s family,” Dean adds, “But it’s a little late in the game to wade back in, guns blazing, thinking you can fix a damn thing. Collateral damage fucking sucks, Cas, but you made a call. Second guessing things now don’t make anyone any happier.” 

“Dean,” Cas implores, “I didn’t even _think_ about the consequences for Claire.” 

“We were in the middle of the frigging apocalypse,” Dean returns, “End of the world, everyone loses, fire and brimstone apocalypse. We didn’t exactly have the luxury, Cas. I didn’t like it but, you weigh it up, and that occasion, we did the right thing.” 

“Perhaps if I were to explain to Claire –” 

“ – Cas, you think it mattered to me, when Sam was locked up in that cage, that it was to save the world? No. What mattered, was that Sam was in _hell_ and there wasn’t a damn thing I can do about it. You’re, what, eleven? You lose your Dad, that _is_ the end of the world. You’re Mom walks out on you and you wind up with douchebags like Randy? You can’t try and reason that away. Ain't no way to make that kind of abandonment hurt less. You can’t say a damn thing to make this more okay, Cas. I’m sorry. It’s dirty, and it’s shitty, but that’s the way it is.” 

“How do I make this better?” Cas asks, voice pained, purposefully level, enough to have Claire’s eyes prickling again. 

“We drop her off at Krissy’s,” Dean says, “We set her up, we drive away and we give her a chance to forget that we ever existed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be Krissy in the next chapter, promise. Also, I'm sure in canon the mark will be a more pertinent and urgent issue than it's being treated as here but... well, I took a few liberties in the name of fic


	3. Chapter 3

"Dean," the girl, Krissy Claire's assuming, looks about her age, maybe slightly younger. She stands in the doorway and raises an eyebrow at him. Brown hair and brown eyes with the sort of stance that makes Claire believe she could take down a vampire, whatever the hell those are actually like. 

"Look at you all grown up," Dean says, smiling slightly. His whole countenance has changed again, into something less serial-killer and more dedicated uncle. "You been keeping out of trouble?" 

"Your child minder stopped showing up. Thought you'd be in touch." 

"Garth, uh, took early retirement,” 

"He _retired_ from hunting?" Krissy asks, eyebrows raised again. 

“Last time I checked that’s what you’d done, too,” Dean says, and apparently that’s a cue for Krissy to finally _smile_ before stepping forward and wrapping her arms round Dean’s neck. Claire’s thrown off because as far as she’s concerned Dean Winchester is a borderline psychopath and not the time of person you’d hug, but stays silent anyway. 

This Dean is a different creature to the one she’s seen previously. Castiel is watching him equally closely. Curiously. 

“Krissy, Castiel,” Dean says, jerking a thumb between the pair of them, “And the ray of sunshine over here is Claire Novak. So, you’ve been hunting.” 

“Just… in the area,” Krissy says. “Angel Castiel?” Dean frowns at her. “What, Garth kept me updated. So what’s really the deal?” 

“He, uh… Garth turned,” Dean says, rolling his shoulders back and frowning. Claire recognises the tone and the fact that Dean’s looking directly at Krissy’s eyes as indicative that he’s delivering bad news, but it still goes over her head. 

She’s frustrated because they all talk in riddles about mythical creatures and missing hearts, and apparently her new warden still kills monsters and is interested about angels but not their vessels. 

“Turned what?” Claire grits out, “Gay? 

“What?” Dean asks, utterly floored as he turns to look at her, then to Castiel, then back to her. “No. Werewolf. He has a wife and a pack. He’s happy. Vegetarians.” He adds at Krissy’s expression, shifting on the balls of his feet. 

Claire shoves her hands into the depths of her pockets and sucks in a breath of air. 

“I thought you killed monsters,” Claire says, “I thought that was your whack-a-do gig. Killing demons and the bogeyman with your angel bestie and your brother.” 

“All right, let’s take this catch up somewhere with coffee,” Dean says, taking her in with a flat expression, “Then, we give the girl the talk.” 

“The sex talk?” Claire asks, mostly just to be contradictory and annoying. She wins a small smile from a Krissy, a squinty frown from Castiel and a suppressed eye roll from Dean. 

“The monster talk,” Krissy says, stepping forward and taking shotgun before Castiel and Dean can fall back in their bickering routine, which is how she winds up in the back seat of a stolen car with an angel wearing her father, listening to Dean Winchester and Krissy Chambers discuss someone turning into a werewolf. 

* 

“Monsters are real,” Dean says, corners of his lips tilting upwards like he thinks he’s being some kind of amusing. He’s probably delivered the speech a lot. He was probably scoffed at most of the time. He was probably ruining someone’s life in the process of the delivery. To Claire, nothing about this is funny. 

“Yeah,” Claire says, “Reckon I’ve met some.” 

His expression drops at that. 

“Angels, demons you know,” Dean says, “Werewolves, vampires, zombies, ghosts, ghouls… what else we got?” 

“Wendigos,” Castiel puts in, “Shapeshifters. Hellhounds.” 

“Vetala, witches, reapers,” Krissy puts in, taking a sip of her coffee. 

“What isn’t real?” Claire asks, focusing on Krissy. She, at least, is not complicit in her father’s death. 

“Fairies,” Krissy says. 

“Hate to break it to you, kid, but… yeah, the fairy folk are alive and kicking. And Leprechauns are bastards.” 

“Seriously?” Krissy asks, brown eyes widening slightly in surprise. It’s not the level of surprise Claire thinks is due for finding out that fucking _fairies_ are real, but she’s at least still surprised. Castiel is still strangely quiet. “Fairies?” 

“I got _abducted_.” 

“So, what, Twilight’s real?” Claire interjects, because she has a feeling this could descend into exchanging bags of crazy, and she’s still not over fairies and werewolves. 

“Fuck no,” Krissy says, “Less sparkle, more fangs.” 

“Very few of the characteristics of vampires featured in twilight are factually accurate,” Castiel puts in, earning him a bemused look from Dean and another quirk of the eyebrow from Krissy. Claire swallows. 

“So Metadouche didn’t spare you any pop culture, huh?” Dean asks, “You got any westerns downloaded? Star trek?” 

“Most ‘Western’s’ are as factually inaccurate as Twilight.” 

“James Dean?” 

“Can you just… just stop flirting a minute and focus?” Claire asks, rubbing her eyes. The comment was intended to be fairly innocuous, she just can’t deal with her _father’s voice_ bending to Castiel’s words whilst her whole worldview is being upturned. Dean flushes in a way that’s a lot more caught-in-the-act than she’s expecting (and also, holy shit) and Krissy smirks in her peripheries. 

Castiel drinks in Dean’s expression like it might actually clench his thirst. 

“Monsters are real,” Claire says, because she doesn’t want to deal with any of this, she just wants to get a handle on what the ever loving fuck this is, and she wants Castiel and Dean to leave, even if that means abandoning her with a stranger. “And they’re bad.” 

“Mostly,” Krissy says, “Hunters only hunt if they’re killing people.” 

“Krissy can give you the low down about what kills what,” Dean says, apparently recovered from whatever the hell that was before, “For protection,” he adds, “This stuff touches you once it has a habit of following you around.” 

“Can everything be killed?” 

“More or less,” Dean says, “We had a bit of trouble ganking Lucifer, but we got him locked up in the end. Some monsters are more complicated than others. You wanna ice someone like this guy, you’ll probably want an angel blade.” Dean says, nodding towards Castiel. “Not that I’m recommending it.” 

“You kill angels?” Claire asks, glancing between Dean and Castiel feeling like the floors disappeared from underneath her. Maybe she lost her faith that angels were _good_ a long time ago, at least in most senses, but she still always thought that they were _righteous_. Maybe their holy causes left collateral damage like her halfway up shit creek without a paddle, but she still figured that they were good; just in a bigger sense that she understood it. In a greater-good way. Not in an angel killing angels way. 

“Sometimes monsters are monsters, sometimes angels are monsters.” 

“And sometimes people are monsters?” Claire finishes, looking at him dead on. 

“Yeah,” Dean says, jaw clenching, “Sometimes people are monsters.” 

* 

Dean and Castiel are returning tomorrow with paperwork and a fake driver’s licence that Dean said would pass as ID under most scrutiny, but advised reapplying for the real deal when she was officially an adult (and she’ll probably get another biting comment about having to get Castiel a new driver’s licence too, after Claire nicked his wallet). Still, she feels better knowing that they’re further away, even if she’s left under the scrutiny of Krissy’s eye. 

Krissy, who is a complete stranger. 

“What did they tell you about me?” Claire all but demands. Krissy was expecting them, so there must have been some communication that she wasn't privy too. 

Krissy has provided her with brief descriptions of Josephine and Aiden, both of whom are apparently at work, and shown her round their house. It is a nice house. Apparently, with the aid of some dodgy paperwork they inherited it from some hunter. She’s gone through their basic routines. Both Krissy and Aiden are still at High School, whilst Josephine is doing college part time. They all work crappy minimum wage jobs that they pool together for bills, groceries, college funds and ammo. It’s all very hunters-Hogwarts, only there’s no adult supervision (expect Josephine, who’s barely old enough to drink). 

Claire hasn’t actually attended school for a few years and they pretty much gave up trying to force her to. Well, they more or less gave up on her completely towards the end. She’s still vaguely surprised that they didn’t let Castiel, pretending (badly) to be her father, have custody over her just so they didn’t have to deal with her anymore. She doesn’t know what she’s going to do whilst they’re busy excelling academically, picking up shifts and killing murderous mystical beings. Get in their way, probably. 

“Not much,” Krissy says, “Dean said you’d been screwed over by this supernatural stuff and that you needed somewhere to go. That’s it.” 

“Oh,” Claire says, wrong-footed again. 

“I don’t…” Krissy frowns, “It’s not his story to tell. Dean’s a good guy, Claire.” 

“I can’t believe that.” 

“He saved my Dad’s life,” 

“Castiel’s vessel was my father,” Claire says, through gritted teeth. She doesn’t know how she wants Krissy to react, she just knows that this is the first time she’s had someone she could say that to without them trying to section her. Her whole life she hasn’t been able to tell anyone why her father left, instead rattling off lines about affairs or religious crises. Her mother’s leaving to ‘find herself’ had been a line she’d used about Jimmy Novak a few years previously. The irony wasn’t lost on her, even if she knew her mother was lying; Amelia Novak’s intention was always to lose herself completely. 

Krissy is even further into this crap that Claire is. She _hunts monsters_ and barely bats an eyelash about acquaintances turning into werewolves. Krissy is quiet for a few long moment. 

“Can see why that would make the flirting awkward,” Krissy says and for some reason that knocks all the fight out of her and she’s smiling despite herself, even though mostly she just wants to curl up somewhere and hide. It’s the type of smile that’s a replacement for tears. 

Krissy’s seen shit though, Claire could tell even if she wasn’t living with a motley crew of teenagers and playing buffy the vampire, because she has the glint in her eyes that Claire recognises from some of the other kids in the group home, or foster care before it. She can always tell the ones who’ve been caught up in violence or danger from the ones who landed there by an unfortunate death. 

“Shit,” Claire says, biting her lip. She’s managed years without blurting out the truth about her messed up life (never mind the people who had that official story scrawled down in her file, or whatever lie she told Dustin before she told him never to bring it up again), and she’s already spinning the sob story to Krissy Chambers. She’s only known her about five minutes and Claire’s pretty sure she doesn’t trust her, not really. Not when she’s buddy-buddy with the Winchesters. "I don’t… these past few days have been crazy.” 

“The crazy gets a bit easier,” Krissy says, but Claire sincerely doubts it. As far as she’s concerned, angels and demons get more difficult and complicated the more she learns about them. “You want to cut and run…” Krissy says, looking up at her, eyes brown and wide and serious, “I can cover for you to Dean.” 

“You want me to leave?” 

“Did I say that?” Krissy asks, “This… this comes with a whole load of crazy. You don’t have to hitch your wagon to that. You can have out if you want out.” Claire swallows. “But, you gotta stay tonight. I set you up a room.” 

Claire follows her up the stairs, quiet, and is absurdly grateful when Krissy doesn’t step beyond the doorway. She slips under the covers fully dressed and listens to her steps descending back downstairs and, later, the sound of muffled voices. 

She has a novel-length list of things she doesn’t want to think about, up to and including Dean Winchester asking Castiel to euthanize him, Randy and her father. 

Instead she focuses on Krissy’s hardened empathy, the solid way she holds herself, the smirk as she fist-pumped Dean Winchester.


End file.
